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Object-oriented operating system
 
 
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An object-oriented operating system is an operating system
Operating system

An operating system is an interface between hardware and applications; it is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the limited resources of the computer....
 which internally uses object-oriented methodologies
Object-oriented programming

Object-oriented programming is a programming paradigm that uses "Object_" and their interactions to design applications and computer programs....
.

An object-oriented operating system is in contrast to an object-oriented user interface
User interface

The user interface is the aggregate of means by which people—the User s—Interaction with the system—a particular machine, device, computer program or other complex tools....
 or programming framework
Framework

A framework is a basic conceptual structure used to solve or address complex issues. This very broad definition has allowed the term to be used as a buzzword, especially in a software context....
, which can be placed above a non-object-oriented operating system like DOS
DOS

DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is a shorthand term for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Me....
, Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of software operating systems and graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces ....
 or Unix
Unix

Unix is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of American Telephone & Telegraph employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson , Dennis Ritchie, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna....
.

It can be argued, however, that there are already object-oriented concepts involved in the design of a more typical operating system such as Unix
Unix

Unix is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of American Telephone & Telegraph employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson , Dennis Ritchie, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna....
.






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Encyclopedia


An object-oriented operating system is an operating system
Operating system

An operating system is an interface between hardware and applications; it is responsible for the management and coordination of activities and the sharing of the limited resources of the computer....
 which internally uses object-oriented methodologies
Object-oriented programming

Object-oriented programming is a programming paradigm that uses "Object_" and their interactions to design applications and computer programs....
.

An object-oriented operating system is in contrast to an object-oriented user interface
User interface

The user interface is the aggregate of means by which people—the User s—Interaction with the system—a particular machine, device, computer program or other complex tools....
 or programming framework
Framework

A framework is a basic conceptual structure used to solve or address complex issues. This very broad definition has allowed the term to be used as a buzzword, especially in a software context....
, which can be placed above a non-object-oriented operating system like DOS
DOS

DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is a shorthand term for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows Me....
, Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of software operating systems and graphical user interfaces produced by Microsoft. Microsoft first introduced an operating environment named Windows in November 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces ....
 or Unix
Unix

Unix is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of American Telephone & Telegraph employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson , Dennis Ritchie, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna....
.

It can be argued, however, that there are already object-oriented concepts involved in the design of a more typical operating system such as Unix
Unix

Unix is a computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of American Telephone & Telegraph employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson , Dennis Ritchie, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna....
. While a more traditional language like C
C (programming language)

C is a general-purpose computer programming language originally developed in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories to implement the Unix operating system....
 does not support object orientation as fluidly as more recent languages, the notion, for example, of a file
Computer file

A computer file is a block of arbitrary information, or resource for storing information, which is available to a computer program and is usually based on some kind of durable computer storage....
, stream, or device driver
Device driver

In computing, a device driver or software driver is a computer program allowing higher-level computer programs to interact with a hardware device....
 (in Unix, each represented as a file descriptor
File descriptor

In computer programming, a file descriptor is an abstract key for accessing a file. The term is generally used in POSIX operating systems. In Microsoft Windows terminology and in the context of the stdio.h, "file handle" is preferred, though the latter case is technically a different object ....
) can be considered a good example of object orientation: they are, after all, abstract data type
Abstract data type

In computing, an abstract data type is a specification of a set of data and the set of operations that can be performed on the data. Such a data type is abstract in the sense that it is independent of various concrete implementations....
s, with various method
Method (computer science)

In object-oriented programming, a method is a subroutine that is exclusively associated either with a class or with an object . Like a procedure in procedural programming languages, a method usually consists of a sequence of statement to perform an action, a set of input parameter to customize those actions, and possibly an output value...
s in the form of system call
System call

In computing, a system call is the mechanism used by an application program to request service from the kernel based on the Monolithic_kernel or to system servers on operating systems based on the microkernel-structure....
s, whose behavior varies based on the type of object, whose implementation details are hidden from the caller, and might even use inheritance
Inheritance (computer science)

In object-oriented programming, inheritance is a way to form new class es using classes that have already been defined. The inheritance concept was invented in 1967 for Simula....
 in their underlying code.

Examples


NeXTSTEP

During the late 1980s, Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs

Steven Paul Jobs is an United States businessman and co-founder, Chairman, and Chief executive officer of Apple Inc.. Jobs is the former CEO of Pixar Animation Studios....
 formed the computer
Computer

A computer is a machine that manipulates Data according to a list of Code .The first devices that resemble modern computers date to the mid-20th century , although the computer concept and various machines similar to computers existed earlier....
 company NeXT
NeXT

NeXT, Inc. was an American computer company headquartered in Redwood City, California, California, that developed and manufactured a series of computer workstations intended for the higher education and business markets....
. One of NeXT's first tasks was to design an object-oriented operating system, NEXTSTEP
NEXTSTEP

Nextstep was the original Object-oriented operating system, computer multitasking operating system that NeXT developed to run on its range of proprietary computers, such as the NeXTcube....
. They did this by adding an object-oriented framework on top of Mach
Mach (kernel)

Mach is an operating system microkernel developed at Carnegie Mellon University to support operating system research, primarily distributed and parallel computation....
 and BSD using the Objective-C
Objective-C

Objective-C is a Reflection , Object-oriented programming programming language which adds Smalltalk-style message passing to C .Today it is used primarily on Mac OS X, iPhone OS, and GNUstep, three environments based on the OpenStep standard, and is the primary language used for the NEXTSTEP, OpenStep#OPENSTEP, and Cocoa application framew...
 language as a basis.

Choices

Choices is an object-oriented operating system that was developed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is a public university research university in the state of Illinois, United States. It is the oldest and largest campus in the University of Illinois system....
. It is written in C++
C++

C++ is a general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as a middle-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level programming language and low-level programming language language features....
 and uses objects to represent core kernel components like the CPU
Central processing unit

A central processing unit is an electronic circuit that can execute computer programs. This broad definition can easily be applied to many early computers that existed long before the term "CPU" ever came into widespread usage....
, process
Process (computing)

In computing, a process is an Object of a computer program that is being sequentially executed by a computer system that has the ability to run several computer programs Concurrency ....
es and so on. Inheritance
Inheritance (computer science)

In object-oriented programming, inheritance is a way to form new class es using classes that have already been defined. The inheritance concept was invented in 1967 for Simula....
 is used to separate the kernel into portable machine independent classes and small non-portable dependent classes. Choices has been ported to and runs on SPARC
SPARC

SPARC is a Reduced Instruction Set Computer microprocessor instruction set Computer architecture originally designed in 1985 by Sun Microsystems....
, x86
X86 architecture

The generic term x86 refers to the most commercially successful instruction set architecture in the history of personal computing. It derived from the model numbers, ending in "86", of the first few processor generations Backward compatibility with the original Intel 8086....
 and ARM
ARM architecture

The ARM architecture is a 32-bit RISC central processing unit architecture developed by ARM Limited that is widely used in embedded system designs....
.

Athene

Athene is an object-based operating system first released in 2000 by Rocklyte Systems. The user environment is constructed entirely from objects that are linked together at runtime. Applications for Athene can also be created using this methodology and are commonly scripted using the object scripting language 'DML' (Dynamic Markup Language). Objects can be shared between processes by creating them in shared memory and locking them as required for access. Athene's object framework is multi-platform, allowing it to be used in Windows and Linux environments for the development of object-oriented programs.

BeOS

One attempt at creating a truly object-oriented operating system was the BeOS
BeOS

BeOS was an operating system for personal computers which began development by Be Inc. in 1991. It was first written to run on BeBox hardware. BeOS was optimized for digital media work and was written to take advantage of modern hardware facilities such as symmetric multiprocessing by utilizing modular I/O bandwidth, pervasive multithreading,...
 of the mid 1990s, which used objects and the C++
C++

C++ is a general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as a middle-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level programming language and low-level programming language language features....
 language for the application programming interface
Application programming interface

An application programming interface is a set of subroutine, data structures, class and/or Protocol provided by library and/or operating system Service s in order to support the building of applications....
 (API). But the kernel itself was written in C with C++ wrappers in user space. The system did not become mainstream though even today it has its fans and benefits from ongoing development.

Syllable

Syllable
Syllable (operating system)

Syllable is a Free software and open-source software operating system for Pentium and compatible processors. Its purpose is to create an easy-to-use desktop operating system for the home and small office user....
 makes heavy use of C++
C++

C++ is a general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as a middle-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level programming language and low-level programming language language features....
 and for that reason is often compared to BeOS
BeOS

BeOS was an operating system for personal computers which began development by Be Inc. in 1991. It was first written to run on BeBox hardware. BeOS was optimized for digital media work and was written to take advantage of modern hardware facilities such as symmetric multiprocessing by utilizing modular I/O bandwidth, pervasive multithreading,...
.

Java-based operating systems

Given that Sun Microsystems
Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems, Inc. is a multinational corporation vendor of computers, computer components, computer software, and information technology services, founded on February 24, 1982....
' Java
Java (programming language)

Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java ....
 is today one of the most dominant object-oriented languages, it is no surprise that Java-based operating systems have been attempted. In this area, ideally, the kernel would consist of the bare minimum required to support a JVM. This is the only component of such an operating system that would have to be written in a language other than Java. Built upon that JVM and basic hardware support, it would be possible to write the rest of the operating system in Java; even parts of the system that are more traditionally written in a lower-level language such as C, for example device driver
Device driver

In computing, a device driver or software driver is a computer program allowing higher-level computer programs to interact with a hardware device....
s, can be written in Java.

Examples of attempts at such an operating system include JNode
JNode

JNode is an open-source project to create a Java platform operating system. The project has taken the unique direction of creating all the software in Java itself, with the exception of some assembly language to booting and load the system....
 and JavaOS
JavaOS

JavaOS is an operating system with a Java virtual machine as a fundamental component. It is developed by Sun Microsystems. Unlike Windows, Mac OS, Unix or Unix-like systems which are primarily written in the C programming language, JavaOS is primarily written in Java programming language....
.

Symbolics Genera


Genera from Symbolics
Symbolics

Symbolics refers to two companies: now-defunct computer manufacturer Symbolics, Inc., and a privately-held company that acquired the assets of the former company and continues to sell and maintain the Open Genera Lisp system and the Macsyma computer algebra system....
 is an operating system for Lisp Machines
Lisp machine

Lisp machines were general-purpose computers designed to efficiently run Lisp programming language as their main programming language. In a sense, they were the first commercial single-user Computer workstation....
 written in ZetaLisp
ZetaLisp

ZetaLisp was the name Symbolics gave to their dialect of Lisp programming language on their Lisp Machine models, to distinguish it from the MIT version, which was called Lisp Machine Lisp....
 and Symbolics Common Lisp
Common Lisp

Common Lisp, commonly abbreviated CL, is a dialect of the Lisp programming language, published in American National Standards Institute standard document Information Technology - Programming Language - Common Lisp, formerly X3.226-1994 ....
. It makes heavy use of Flavors (an early object-oriented extension to Lisp) and the Common Lisp Object System (CLOS). The development started in the mid 70s at MIT.

See also

  • Virtualization
    Virtualization

    In computing, platform virtualization is a virtualization of computers or operating systems. It hides the physical characteristics of computing platform from the users, instead showing another abstract, emulated computing platform....
     approach to O-O OS
  • Plan9 alternative 'resource' approach
  • Parrot virtual machine
    Parrot virtual machine

    Parrot is a register machine virtual machine being developed using the C and intended to run dynamic languages efficiently. It uses just-in-time compilation for speed to reduce the interpretation overhead....
     alternative VM project
  • Smalltalk
    Smalltalk

    Smalltalk is an Object-oriented programming, Type system, reflection computer programming programming language. Smalltalk was created as the language to underpin the "new world" of computing exemplified by "human?computer symbiosis." It was designed and created in part for educational use, more so for constructionist learning, at PARC by Al...
    , the first O-O GUI development environment (IDE) also developed with a view to an O-O OS (not realized)
  • Slate evolves from Smalltalk with some O-O OS aspirations restored


External links

  • , former IBM project
  • aspirations to displace the OS with the language environment itself